A simple communication tool for modern families The home tech space is a bit of a circus right now, as heavyweights Apple, Google, and Amazon duke it out with their respective smart home hub devices and all sorts of smart lightbulbs and thermostats fight for a piece of your home.
Nucleus, a two-year-old startup that finally began shipping its product this past summer, takes a drastically Ordinary Jane approach to home tech, striving to serve not the early adopters, but those allergic to all things ?Internet of Things.? How are they doing it" With the kind of technology even grandparents will understand: an intercom system for modern era.

Popularized in the mid-20th-century, original home intercom systems were wired electrically throughout the house and offered a rad new way to call kids to the dinner table. Nucleus wants to do the same for today?s families?improve communication, that is?with some modern twists. For one, the advent of Wi-Fi means that rather than having wires limit calls to within one house, Nucleus devices?or phones with the Nucleus app?can also talk to each other from across the town, state, or ocean.
Each unit, available in both black and white, can be mounted on the wall or set on a table, and is powered using a wall adapter or over Ethernet. Cost-wise, they?re going for $249 each on the Nucleus site and at Lowe?s (about $200 on Amazon), though savings can be had in multi-packs.
According to founder and CEO J...